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SPEECH o/ 

Roger C. Sullivan 

Democratic Nominee 

for United States Senator from Illinois 

Made at the 

Illinois Democratic State Convention 

Held at Springfield, Illinois 

Friday. Sept. 18th 

1914 



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Speech of Roper C. Sullivan, Democratic 
Nominee for United States Senator 

The convention in which we are assembled marks the 
beginning of new times. A Democratic Congress opened the 
door for amendment of the constitution of the United States. 
and gave to the people the right to choose by direct vote their 
representatives in the United States senate. And so. for the 
first time in Illinois history, the candidate for United States 
senator comes today from the people to the convention, instead 
of going from the convention to the people. 

I lack words to tell yon how proud I am to be the first 
Democratic candidate for senator to carry the people's com- 
mission into a convention of his party. And because the nomi- 
nation has come to me by a direct vote of the people. I cannot 
regard it as a personal triumph. I look upon it as the call of 
my party to public service; a call to lead in the contest before 
us; and in response to that call I give my pledge to carry on 
that contest with all the ability, all the courage and all the 
energy I possess. 

By tr»nsf»r 
Tbe Wh. te House 



Who today would undo what has been done in these few 
mon ths? Where is the man, Where even the most partisan 
Republican or Progressive, who would dare to advocate the. 
blotting out of one line of that record? 

Keep in mind the fact that it is the record of but eighteen 
months. Then call to mind the record of the preceding six- 
teen years, during which the Republican party was m power. 
Compare the two. Give the Republicans the odds of srxteen 
years to a year and a half, then judge which shows the most 
'in actual achievement for the betterment of our people and 
the advancement of humankind. 

One Republican administration succeeded another at 
Washington. Conservative Republicans, Progressive Repub- 
licans Stand-Pat Republicans and Reactionary Repubheans 
talked and promised and went home. There were promises 
of tariff revision, of revenue reform, of trust regulation. One 
Republican President promised revision of the tariff down- 
ward, and did nothing. His successor came promismg rev,s,on 
downward an d gave us revision upward. A people starving 
for constructive legislation was gorged with promises. 



Words are but poor things when the heart is full, and it 
is not with words that I intend to repay the faith in me which 
the Democrats of Illinois have expressed by their votes. I 
have been a worker all my life. I began working when a boy: 
I kept it up when I could have ceased work. I have loved 
labor, and I still love it: for it is only by honest labor in the 
public service that I can discharge the obligation the Demo- 
cratic party of Illinois has laid upon me. When I go to 
Washington as United States senator from Illinois — and I 
will go — it will not be to shine as an orator, not to gratify social 
aspirations, not to serve personal ambitions, but to work, with- 
out reservation, for those policies and for that program which 
I have advocated throughout the campaign for my nomination. 

Friends and opponents alike have said that I have con- 
structive ability. I am thankful for it, for these are construc- 
tive days. 

The campaign for the November election is to be, upon 
our part, a campaign for right and justice and good govern- 
ment; a campaign to preserve the constructive work already 
achieved by a Democratic national administration, and to but- 
tress that work by completing the constructive program now 
in hand. We enter this campaign as the advocates of peace, 
prosperity and progress everywhere. To mark the sincerity 
of our purpose, we offer the record of our party since it came 
into power a little more than eighteen months ago. 



It was a time of hypocrisy and cant; a time of standing- 
pat and pulling back: a time when each grabbed what he could 
get and reached for more, careless of whose rights he invaded: 
a time when the strong were encouraged to band together to 
keep what they had and take what they could. So intent were 
they on getting that they sometimes robbed each other and 
picked the pockets of their own kind, as in the case of the 
New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. It was an era 
of economic reversion to the law of tooth and claw. 

Cant and hypocrisy, I say, were everywhere. Republicans 
in high places talked much and loudly of robber barons and 
malefactors of great wealth, then winked at railroad rebates 
to the barons and looked the other way when the malefactors 
were at work. They told us the trusts were the great enemies 
of the people, and were fostered by an exorbitant tariff, and 
they gave us relief by revising the tariff— upward. They said 
our currency law was antiquated, inadequate and unjust, per- 
mitting control of our finances by a favored few— and they 
gave us the panic of 1907 to prove it-but they left the law 
untouched of pen or pencil. They pointed out the wickedness 
of interlocking directorates, of stock-watering and of unlawful 
combinations; but they helped along the Tennessee Coal and 
Iron deal, and permitted the Mellen regime to go as far as it 
liked in wrecking the railroads of New England. They held 
op to us the justice of an income tax to equalize the cost of 
government by shifting a part of the burden of those who were 
carrying the tariff load to those who profited by the tariff; 
but thev didn't give us the law. 



They gave us half a generation of promises made to get 
votes, and broken to get campaign contributions. They 
preached one thing- and practiced another until the nation 
became saturated with hypocrisy, even as the government 
at Washington. Those vices trickled, downward from the 
national government into our business life, and into our social 
life. 

At last the people sickened of a diet of cant until even 
those who bad glorified the history and proclaimed the benefi- 
cence of the Republican party turned insurgent upon the cul- 
minating hypocrisy of the tariff revision upward. Then came 
tbe Baltimore convention, and Illinois made it possible to eleet 
to tbe presidency the greatest constructive statesman of tbe 
age — Woodrow Wilson. 

With that event dawned a new day for this country. 
Honesty and fair dealing with the people took tbe place of 
chicanery and deceit. Tbe people learned that political prom- 
ises could be kept: that a party pledge made before election 
became a party obligation after election. 



The day of hypocrisy is passing. We are coming to a 
new understanding of the word "honesty." By it we do not 
now mean mere dollar honesty; we mean mental honesty as 
well. We are upon a time when the people will demand 
mental honesty of all their public officials; when men in big 
business and in little business will find they cannot succeed 
through misrepresentation, deceit or chicanery. We are at a 
point where organized society must understand that life must 
be a fair, free and open race, without special privileges for 
anyone, and without exemptions from the penalties of wrong- 
doing. 

AVe are coming to a time when efficiency is to take the. 
place of sham in governmental affairs and in business affairs, 
for when honesty controls only efficiency and good service avail. 

Only eighteen months have passed since President Wilson 
came into office, but they have been months of accomplishment, 
of efficiency, of real progress. 

Tariff reform came first. A tariff law which even its 
friends damned with faint praise, was replaced by one which 
was faii\ equitable and responsive to public demand. 

The income tax went on the statute books with the tariff 
law. It removed a burden of taxation from those least able 
to bear it. and placed it where it belonged, on those who hardly 
felt the addition. 



Then came currency reform. It had been promised for 
fifty years. It had been a convenient football for gentlemen 
who wanted to talk, but who did not care to act. A currency 
law has been passed, and it is so good a law that even now. 
before it is in full effect, it is our safeguard in a time of finan- 
cial peril. 

But the constructive work of the Democratic national 
administration is only fairly begun. Our party is pledged fur- 
ther, and the pledges will be fulfilled. 

Laws to stop the criminal practices of "big business" are 
on the eve of attainment. If they are not passed before I get 
to Washington, they will have my vote. They are not laws 
to interfere with honest business, not laws to hamper it nor dis- 
turb it: but laws to drive out rascality, and to put the business 
of the country upon a sound and permanent basis. 

Another piece of constructive legislation that will engage 
my earnest personal efforts is that for an American merchant 
marine. The crops of our Prairie State should be carried to 
the markets of the world in ships that fly the American flag; 
our manufactured products should go with the crops. We 
cannot overestimate the stimulus that restoration of the United 
States to its proper place among the maritime nations will give 
to industry in Illinois. The question of a merchant marine is 
not a local seaboard question. Europe, with its shipping 
blockaded, no longer can furnish the vessels needed to carry our 
freights. The opportunity to do this for ourselves awaits us. 



There is still another piece of constructive work, nearer 
home, that I will undertake to further. Iowa. Indiana. Mich- 
igan and other states in our immediate territory, are benefited 
bv <>ood roads in Illinois, as Illinois i,s benefited by good roads 
in those states. The federal government spends millions of 
dollars yearly on river and harbor improvement, much of it 
of doubtful value. A tithe of the amount so spent, if laid out 
upon our highways, would materially reduce the cost of mar- 
keting our products, to the advantage of the worker, the manu- 
facturer and particularly the farmer. 

Let us now turn again to the record of Democratic achieve- 
ment. On its work in enacting constructive legislation alone 
the Democratic national administration lias earned a unani- 
mous vote of approval from the American people. But there 
is a record of still more solemn significance. The page of 
history that will show the greatest service to our country and 
to humanity performed in our time is being written now. 

Let your minds dwell for a moment upon Mexico and all 
that is suggested by that name. Only a few weeks ago. you 
will remember, there were men in this eountry who were willing 
to plunge this nation into war. if they could obtain personal 
or political advantage thereby. You remember the abuse and 
scorn heaped upon the President because he remained firm in 
a erisis; because he demanded that both sides of a question be 
considered: because he dared to do right in the face of threats 
that to do right was to lose popularity. 



Then Europe burst into a flame of war. A continent is 
bathed in blood. A generation is being destroyed. The world 
trembles, amazed and appalled. Every great nation of the 
Caucasion race, save ours, is involved — every one, save us, is 
on the battlefield, or sits armed awaiting the dread day of con- 
flict. 

But America is at peace. We have no call for volunteers. 
We have no conscription. We have no lists of dead and 
injured. 

America stands aghast at conditions it believed civiliza- 
tion bad made impossible. And yet the Mexican situation 
held the same germ of international strife that the Servian 

situation held. 






We are not at peaee by accident. We are at peace because 
Woodrow Wilson had the vision, the justice and the courage 
to stand firm for peace and the methods of peace against clamor 
for war. Had hot blood, rash pride and arrogance of power 
been ffiven their way, we would have been at war with Mexico, 
and God alone knows where else, before the war spirit swept 
Europe. But steadfast in the knowledge that he was right, 
the President took the unfair criticism that assailed him and 
turned the jibes of the boasters and the self-serving into the 
gratitude of the millions. He is in Washington, "sticking to 
his job," holding our country to the course of peace, meeting 
with sound sense and honest purposes all the problems of the 
great war, and ready, on the first occasion that offers, to 
mediate between the warring powers and bring peace to 
Europe. He has earned our gratitude by keeping our peace 
secure. He will earn the gratitude of the world by restoring 
the peace of the world. Hope today for the millions of our 
brothers in Europe lies in that strong, lonely man in the White 
House. 



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Let us thank God, my friends, that at the crisis of the 
century Woodrow Wilson was at the head of this nation. Let 
us be grateful, too, that lie had a Democratic Congress to 
uphold him, to sujjport his policies and to stand with him in 
his determination to maintain peace. 

Our President has shown us that he can stand criticism 
unmoved. We must show him that we appreciate his courage 
by giving him a Congress with a friendly majority so strong 
that no demagogue will dare to oppose his pacific policy. We 
must show the nations of Europe that the people of the United 
States are at one with their great leader. The welfare of the 
whole world, as well as the welfare of our own country, is con- 
cerned in the campaign we open today. 

The hands of the President must be upheld. That can 
Ik done only by the election of men tp the national Congress 
who are in thorough accord with his policies. The Democratic 
majority in the senate is small. That majority must be 
increased. In this task Illinois has its share. It has one 
Democratic senator in Washington, lint his vote is offset by 
that of a colleague who, on all important questions, is arrayed 
against the President and aligned with his bitterest critics. 



Illinois must not be content to be merely a negative force 
in this situation, but should be and must be a positive force 
with two representatives in the upper chamber of the national 
Congress upon whom the President can rely. 

Shall the head of this government he sustained in the hour 
of world-wide conflict? That, my friends, is the question this 
nation is now called upon to answer. That is the question to 
which you and I and all patriotic citizens are in duty hound 
to bring a triumphantly affirmative answer at the conclusion 
of the contest upon which we enter today. The eyes of the 
world are upon us. Beside that vital issue, the question of 
whether Roger Sullivan or another shall be the next United 
States senator from Illinois is of no importance. 

By mandate of the people, delivered in a free and open 
and state-wide primary election, I am the nominee of the Dem- 
ocratic party for United States senator. The question of sus- 
taining the President of the United States at this time can he 
affirmatively answered only by my election and by the election 
of the Democratic candidates for the national house of repre- 
sentatives in every congressional district of the state. 



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When I entered upon the contest for the nomination which 
has come to me, it was with a desire to find a broad opportunity 
to support personally and officially the policies of President 
Wilson, and to aid him to the fullest extent of my power in his 
great constructive work. As the campaign has progressed and 
momentous situations have been unfolded, my admiration for 
him has grown stronger. 1 am pledged to support him. My 
pledge has never been lightly made. No man has ever said 
that Roger Sullivan broke his word. 

In my campaign for the nomination I made no appeal to 
prejudice, to class or to locality. No bitterness, no strife, no 
legitimate excuse for reluctance to abide by and heartily sup- 
port the result of the primary election can be found in any act 
of mine, during the campaign which has just closed or during 
the entire period of my life. 

The primary has been held. The verdict has been given. 
The good Democrats who differed with me in the primary cam- 
paign have accepted that verdict, manfully and in good spirit. 
Our party stands harmonious and united as it has never been 
united before. The solid phalanx of the Illinois Democracy 
is readv to meet its foes. 



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I believe that I can render to the President effective aid. 
The Democrats of Illinois have declared that they believe 
T can. Upon this question of sustaining President Wilson 
and the Democratic national administration 1 am going to the 
people, along with my fellow-Democrats who have been nomi- 
nated for Congress. I know there can be but one answer. It 
will be given — it must be given by a majority that will mark 
the high-tide of patriotic citizenship in Illinois. 



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